Ozymandias, Words For Eternity

Shelley's ,,Ozymandias"

Words for eternity

,,I am Osymandias, king of kings; if anyone would know how great I am, and where I lie, let him excel any of my works"

These are the words engraved on the tombstone of the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses II. Ozymandias is undoubtedly one of both Percy Bysshe Shelley's and romantic poetry's best known works. It was written in December of 1817 during a writing contest and it was published in 1818.

Shelley was part of the Romantic Movement that originated in 18th century Europe. The Romantics, including Shelley, are characterized by a strong sense of individualism. They also typify themselves as stressing the beauty of nature, death, and their love for Shakespearean works. Another strong theme in Romanticism is escapism. They often imagined exotic locations and the distant past was revalued. ,,Ruins were sentimentalized as iconic of the action of Nature on the works of man, and mythic and legendary material which would previously have been seen as low culture became a common basis for works of high art and literature.''

Shelley's poem Ozymandias encompasses many of these themes of the romantic age. The poem is a small tale of a ,,traveler from an antique land's" (line 1) account on Ozymandias' statue he set eyes on in the (Egyptian) desert. At a first glance, the poem deals with the irony of the engravings on the stone; nothing remains of the great kingdom Ozymandias once ruled, only the ruins of a once mighty statue. But at a closer look, a different and more interesting theme arises. Although nothing of this grand statue remains, or as the traveler puts it ,,nothing beside remains....of that colossal wreck," the only intact remnants of the statue are the words engraved by the sculptor. Shelley composes a subtle but interesting point through these words: power and objects are forgotten in the rush of history, but words transcend the limits of time.

Most of Shelley's poem covers the traveler's description of a grand statue he saw in the deserts of Egypt:

,,Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert . . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command"

This paints a rather pathetic image of a once grand statue of what we later discover to be a sculpture of Ozymandias. The traveler does not finish his description of the wrecked statue until the ninth verse:

,,Nothing beside remains: round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away."

The exotic location, ancient Egypt, and the ruins of Ozymandias are all highly Romantic themes, but why does Shelley put such an emphasis on describing the ruins of this long forgotten sculpture? The answer to this comes in line ten where the traveler illustrates a pedestal on which the following is written:

,,My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

Ozymandias tells us to ,,look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.'' These are seemingly very confident and arrogant words by Ozymandias. But Irony comes in two different shades here, particularly when we look at the word "despair." We can interpret this word the way Ozymandias intended it and in doing so we find that time has had its way with his creations. When the statue was first built and its surrounding kingdom was visible, it was most definitely an awesome sight that would have given us reason to despair. But now there is nothing left but ruins of a once magnificent statue and nothing but sand surrounds it. Observing this sheds new light on the word "despair." We should despair not because of the grandeur of his creation, but what time did to his creations. As William Freedman expresses, ,,We accept Shelley's ironic dismissal of the tyrants boast because we have seen what an absurdity time has made of it'' The thought that is portrayed is that power and prominence is meaningless simply for the reason that both are lost and forgotten in history.

This is a rather bleak foresight and thus, why would Shelley go to the trouble of writing if all fame and recognition is lost in eternity? Here is where the second irony comes into play. All that we have left of Ozymandias is a picture of his character. This recollection is not brought to mind due to his majesty and power, but is evoked through the artist's interpretation of the heritage of Ozymandias' character. And thus there is another way to interpret the words engraved on the pedestal. Although there is nothing